People With Diabetes Should Re-Appropriate the Term "Diabetic" (noun)

In December, DiabetesMine ran a post entitled "Using 'Diabetic' vs. 'Person with Diabetes' - Does It Matter?".  It got me to thinking about the term "diabetic" as a noun and how outdated it is, but it also raised the question in my mind as to whether its really worth getting upset over.Back in 1998, the late Deb Butterfield grappled with the issue of political correctness and the outdated term "diabetic" used as a noun (See http://ow.ly/Jrm66 for the article she wrote).  Deb wrote "... if it's all right with you, may we take it for granted that we are all people and divide by that common denominator? May we describe 'people who have diabetes' as 'diabetics,' 'people who are citizens of the Unites States of America' as 'Americans,' 'people who work for companies' as 'employees,' and 'people who have medical degrees' as 'doctors'?"  That sounded OK, but it missed the broader issue in my opinion.In no other disease state are people referred to by their conditions, so why is it OK with diabetes?For example, we don't ever call people with cancer "cancerians" or heart disease patients "cardiovasclarians" (that may be a bit of a mouthful, but it makes my point), so the complaint about diabetes and use of the term "diabetic" (as a noun) to describe people with diabetes is legitimate.  The real issue is from my perspective is the fact that people who use the term really should be more sensitive to using the term "diabetic" (as a noun) yet really don't see anything ...
Source: Scott's Web Log - Category: Endocrinology Tags: Deb Butterfield 2015 diabetic PWD Source Type: blogs